Industries: private practices
Private practice software for UK clinics, built beside the system you already use
Your podiatrist, osteopath, counsellor and speech therapist each keep notes and invoices in a practice system. Nobody runs the building: the rooms, the rent, the home visit round, the stock and the shared inbox. That is the part we build.
Four professions, one corridor and a shared front door
A multi-therapist private practice in York or Leicester rarely looks like the screenshots in a software brochure. The podiatrist has her own room with a chair and a drill, and spends two mornings a week on home visits. The osteopath works in Room 1. A counsellor rents the quiet room on Mondays and Thursdays, and a speech and language therapist sees children after school in the room with the toys. Each has their own diary, their own register and often their own practice system.
Private practice software UK clinics buy, such as Rushcliff PPS, WriteUpp or Cliniko, does the clinical side well: notes, invoices and billing for each clinician. What it rarely does is run the building. Who is in which room on Wednesday, who pays which rent, which bag goes on the round, and who answers the email that arrived at midnight. That sits between the systems, and that is what we build.
Where the week of a shared practice leaks
The sessions themselves run fine. Time goes before and after them. Two clinicians book the same room because the paper rota on the kitchen door was out of date. A counselling client sits in a room next to an osteopathy session with the wall too thin. The podiatrist drives back to the clinic because the insole blanks were not in the car. A message about Bupa cover for osteopathy waits two days because nobody knew whose inbox it was. And at the end of the month someone counts the half days each room was rented on a calculator.
Whether you searched for private practice management software in the UK, therapy practice management software, counselling practice management software or podiatry software, the clinical systems already exist and most practices have one. None of this needs a new practice system. It needs a layer around the ones you have: a room board, a phone app for the round, stock per room, an inbox that sorts itself, and links into your practice system where it offers an API, so nobody types the same appointment twice.
A counselling session moves to the quiet room
The board spotted a problem
On Wednesday Ruth's counselling clients are booked into Room 1 from 4pm, next to Tom's sessions. Room 1 is not soundproofed.
The board moves Ruth to Room 2, the quiet room, which is free that afternoon, and updates her clients' confirmation emails.
Fixed: Ruth moved to Room 2
An example of what we can build, with made-up names. You choose what the board checks.
A room board with the practice's own rules
A room board puts rooms and clinicians side by side, per day and per hour. It knows what each room has: the podiatry chair, the treatment couch, the soundproofing, the toys and the low table for children. And it checks the rules you set together: counselling only in a quiet room, the speech therapist's after-school sessions in Room 4, the owner first on fixed days.
The same board runs the rent. A therapist who rents by the half day gets a monthly statement of the sessions they used and an invoice that follows from it, instead of a spreadsheet and an awkward conversation. For a clinic that also employs staff, the board can grow into a rota for people as well as rooms.
A podiatrist's round, from Room 3 to the care home
- The round is in orderHome visits and the care home are on the map in driving order, with the address and a number to call.
- Insoles follow the stockTake blanks in the car and the app counts them down. The store cupboard knows what is left.
- Notes stay in the recordThe phone shows the visit and the admin. Clinical notes go straight to the record, not the camera roll.
An example of what we can build, with made-up names. You choose what the record shows.
Home visits and stock that follow the round
A podiatrist on home visits needs the day on her phone in the order of the drive, with what each visit needs and a way to take the fee at the door. Notes typed at the visit go straight to the record in the practice system, not to the camera roll. If the round includes care homes, the same list shows which residents and who to ask for on the ward.
Stock is the other half. Insole blanks per size, sterile dressings, scalpel blades, couch roll and gloves sit in the podiatry room, the store cupboard and the home visit bag. Inventory management per place counts down what leaves and proposes an order before something runs out, so nobody drives back for a box of blades.
Insoles, dressings and blades per room and in the bag
Blades running low
1 box left, 3 needed for bookings to the end of November. Proposal: 3 boxes from your supplier for Friday.
An example of what we can build, with made-up names and numbers. You choose when each item raises an alert.
Found by profession, booked into the right diary
People search by profession and town: podiatrist York, osteopath near me, child speech therapist Leeds. A practice with a page per clinician, their register number and their days, and online booking that lands in that clinician's own diary, turns those searches into appointments. How the site itself is built is on website for therapists; booking per clinician is a booking system for your website. For the map, see create a Google Business Profile and how we do local SEO.
Every page carries the right title. A podiatrist, dietitian or speech and language therapist names their HCPC registration, an osteopath their GOsC registration, a counsellor their voluntary register. Advertising, your website included, falls under the CAP Code that the ASA enforces: no claims to cure and no outcome you cannot back with evidence.
A search for a podiatrist in York that books a home visit
New booking
Home visit for her father, Haxby
Helen, York, today 07:52
- A page per therapist, with their register number
- One Google profile for the practice
- Online booking in each therapist's own diary
An example of what we can build, with made-up names and reviews.
An inbox that knows whose message it is
A shared practice has one email address and four professions behind it. An insurer question for the osteopath, an after-school slot for the speech therapist, a cancellation for the counsellor, a home visit request for the podiatrist. AI reads each message, puts it with the right clinician and drafts a reply with fees or free slots. A person sends it. The AI gives no clinical advice.
Health data is special category data under UK GDPR, so the model runs with a supplier that signs a data processing agreement, keeps nothing to train on and stores data where your policy allows. Each clinician sees only their own messages. How the UK rules differ from the EU's is in UK GDPR vs EU GDPR, and the wider question in is ChatGPT safe for business.
Six overnight messages, sorted per clinician
An example of what we can build, with made-up names. The AI gives no clinical advice, it sorts and drafts.
How much a practice of your size needs
A sole therapist renting one room needs a good diary and nothing more. A centre with twenty clinicians across six professions needs a layer that runs the building. This is what we would build at each size, beside the practice systems the clinicians already use.
| Size | What you need | What you do not need yet |
|---|---|---|
| One therapist, one room | A site with online booking, a shared room calendar | A room board, rent statements |
| Practice of 5 | Room board, rent per half day, inbox per clinician | An app for clients |
| Centre of 20 to 50 | Roles per profession, stock per room, reports per clinician | Your own clinical record system |
| Larger | Several sites, links to accounts and referrers | Rebuilding what you can buy |
Whether to build or buy each piece is a fair question; build vs buy software sets out how we weigh it.
The UK rules a shared practice works under
A multi-therapist practice combines professions with different regulators. The software keeps them apart.
| Situation | What the rule asks | What the software does |
|---|---|---|
| Podiatrist, dietitian, speech and language therapist, practitioner psychologist | Protected titles: registration with the HCPC | Shows the HCPC number with the name on every page and letter |
| Osteopath | Protected title under the Osteopaths Act 1993: registration with the GOsC | Shows the GOsC number with the name |
| Counsellor or psychotherapist | Not regulated by law; accredited voluntary registers such as BACP or UKCP | Shows the register the counsellor chose |
| Processing health data | ICO data protection fee, tier 1 is 52 pounds a year | Keeps the record of processing per clinician |
| Health data in a shared building | UK GDPR special category data | Each clinician sees only their own clients |
| Subject access request | An answer within one month, extendable by two months in some cases | Export per client, log of who opened what |
What a rule means for a particular client is for the clinician and their regulator to decide. The software counts and shows; it decides nothing.
A podiatrist, an osteopath and two tenants in a week
| Task per week | Diaries and a paper rota | With board, app and stock |
|---|---|---|
| Bookings by phone | 90 minutes | 35 minutes |
| Rooms and cover | 45 minutes | 10 minutes |
| Stock counts and orders | 30 minutes | 10 minutes |
| Planning the round | 30 minutes | 10 minutes |
| Rent statements | 15 minutes | 0 minutes |
| Total | 210 minutes | 65 minutes |
That is over two hours a week for the practice as a whole. What a project costs is set out in custom software development cost, and the calculator gives a first estimate.
Starting with the board for the building
- A call with the cliniciansWho works when in which room, who rents, who does home visits, which practice systems do you use? We look at an ordinary week.
- A fixed price for the first pieceUsually that is the room board. A website starts from 1,500 euros; software gets a price after the call.
- A month in real useThe building runs on it for a month. What rubs, we fix before the round app or the stock follows.
We have no private practice as a client yet. We did shield sensitive data in the management platform for Business Centrum, with two-factor authentication, sessions you can revoke and encrypted storage. If a physiotherapist or a dentist shares your building, read physiotherapists and dental practices too. A practice next to a pharmacy or an optician will find the same approach for their trade.
Questions private practices ask us
Does this replace Rushcliff PPS, WriteUpp or Cliniko?
No. Notes, invoices and billing stay in the practice system each clinician uses. We build what sits around it for the whole building: the room board, rent, the round, stock and the shared inbox, linked to your system where it offers an API.
Can clinicians in one building use different practice systems?
Yes. The room board and the inbox do not need everyone on the same system. Each clinician keeps their own records; the shared layer only knows who is where and which message is theirs.
Can tenants see each other's clients?
No. Each clinician sees their own clients and messages. The board shows that a room is taken, not by whom it is being used for.
Do we need to register with the ICO?
Most practices that process health data pay the ICO data protection fee; for a small organisation that is tier 1. Check the ICO's self-assessment for your own case. Each self-employed tenant may need their own registration.
Can a counsellor list BACP membership like an HCPC registration?
They can name it, as long as it is clear that it is a voluntary register. Counselling is not regulated by law in the UK, so the page says which register the counsellor belongs to.
What does private practice software from VBS cost?
You pay for the piece you want first, at a fixed price agreed after a call. A website starts from 1,500 euros.
Custom software
How VBS helps you with this
We build the platform your business runs on every day: your spreadsheets, emails and paperwork in one system that does what you do.
- Your workflow mapped first, then a fixed price
- Screens for the office, the client and the road
- Hosting, backups and security managed by us on AWS
How we approach it is on our page about Custom software.
A building that runs without a rota on the kitchen door?
Tell us who works in your practice and how the rooms are shared. We will show you where we would start.
Rather get in touch right away?